MPGSpotter

Pretty much all concerns everyone had were true: the specialist system makes no sense and defeats any cohesion that may have existed, making every single soldier on the battlefield play and build their class solely for themselves. The UI is absolutely atrocious and doesn't build on any UI customization from the previous games, from the awful tiny minimap to flag markers not disappearing while aiming and covering up enemies to the fact that the only way to identify enemies is by a color of a dot over their head, which leads to laughable situations where players run past their enemies thinking they're friends, and a remarkable amount of friendly fire. The gameplay is stiff and controls unresponsive, the gunplay is awful and the (admittedly, not all will agree) terrible weapon accuracy/bloom system is so much worse than in any game before. Graphically impressive, but ruined by vaseline TAA you can't turn off, and terrible framerate on a 9900k + 3080ti. The sound design is very good, but once again marred by some of the worst directional sound I've heard in a videogame, with a range of bugs from hearing footsteps of someone 300 meters away like they're directly behind you to not hearing tank cannon shots right next to you. Increase in player counts is a great idea in theory, but ruined by both the developers (completely unfitting map design) and the players themselves (the match turns into two blobs of 64 players running between capture points, with the only gunfights really happening when they meet or when helicopters come into play). Adding AI to multiplayer matches is an absolutely baffling idea, and the half-braindead artificial teammates make each match look even more like a bunch of headless chickens running around an open field. Map design, while absolutely gorgeous to look at, is atrocious for gameplay, with huge open areas where infantry is practically useless, while snipers and vehicles have a field day. Portal as it is is woefully lacking in content (much like the rest of the game), and the server browser won't even tell you the rules of any of the bazillion servers beyond tags like "custom points" or "changed movement". Protagonist specialists don't shut up, other specialists scream from both sides of the trenches in all kinds of languages throwing me off. The guns are laughably low quality, from attachments misaligned with the gun itself to 7.62 firearms using 5.56 suppressors to animations being incorrect for the specific firearm (see the bolt on the ACR during firing or the preparation/initial spawn animation on the AK74U), DESPITE BEING CORRECT IN THE PREVIOUS GAMES. I downloaded it genuinely hoping it'd be great despite the terrible beta and baffling design decisions, but I just couldn't bring myself to like it. Maybe in a year or so when portal receives enough content and the game goes 50% off I'll give it another shot, as I really want to like this game. The whole experience feels like it was build from scratch by someone who was described what Battlefield should feel like, but all they played is other popular modern shooters. Very glad my favorite Battlefield 4 servers are still full to tide me over until this game gets good, if it ever gets to that point.

The best HoMM game, and the last good game in the series. I've enjoyed 5 far more than 3 or 4. Also has incredible soundtrack that brings a nostalgic tear to my eye and an artstyle that still hold up well in 2020. Simple but incredibly addictive gameplay, to the point where I want to jump back into a new match right after I finished a 5-hour LAN party. All around a much more fun and memorable game than any other in the series. 5.5 mod makes it even better, in addition to still having a friendly and active community.

Very good RPG in pretty much every way, except encounter design. Pretty much every enemy has more action points than your party and has no limit on how many times they can cast the same spell in a turn, giving every fight a tinge of cheap difficulty. A few times the game pulls the strange "enemy that looks electric is immune to poison but weak to electricity" kinda card, or the "who knew crocodiles could teleport" kinda card, and likes to crank the enemies' initiative to the point where one of your characters (or the entire party - looking at you, underground arena) gets all their armor obliterated on turn 0. I'm pretty sure at some point the arena dog had more intelligence than any mage you could get at that point, too. Mods fix a lot of these problems, though

A criminally underrated space sandbox RPG with elements of RTS, third-person and arcade shooters, and even text adventure. A massive trove of replayable content with many things to do in trade, war, upgrading your character and your ships, and making a name for yourself in a galaxy filled with pilots trying to do the same. Even has a prison sentence text adventure with a trainable pet roach. Incredible soundtrack full of memorable tunes that will get stuck in your head for life. Still supported and updated by the developers despite being released over 10 years ago. Janky and unbalanced at times, but dripping with soul and immersion, flavorful and at times funny writing, and tons of hidden easter eggs, even including the very first dialogue. A true hidden gem.

A graphically beautiful yet underdeveloped reimagination of the Project Reality mod for Battlefield 2. Somewhat lacking in content in comparison to its predecessor. I've been playing on and off since very early alphas, with just over 600 hours now. For every new feature every update up to 1.0 there's been an equally baffling bad design decision. Many missing/cancelled features since the original kickstarter, common requests from the community often go ignored, and even more features hilariously removed during the alpha/beta with absolutely no explanation. Many concessions and features were done to accommodate more casual players, which ended in the game practically appealing to neither casual players nor experienced SLs, awkwardly hovering halfway between Battlefield and Arma and struggling to get the playerbase of either. Still many bugs and stability issues since 1.0 release, and a community that sadly gets more toxic day by day. It does look like the developers are finally picking up steam, with some commonly requested features finally being implemented in v2.0, as well as general stability improvements. It's far from ideal, but it has the potential to get there, and I hope it does.

I have almost 100 hours of this in co-op, and yet I struggle to find any kind of fun in its extremely uninteresting gameplay loop. Character differences are miniscule and get overshadowed by a good selection of items anyway, the only exceptions being the engineer (just barely) and the melee characters (same as ranged, but more annoying to play). Each run feels like it's almost exclusively controlled by the random items you get, with everything else barely mattering at all. Even then, none of the items I've seen change the playstyle (unless you get one of the godlike lunar items that will let you beat the entire game without pressing left click whatsoever). The game turns out to be extremely easy (except that one part everyone hates) even on the hardest difficulties and even if you stroll through the levels at granny pace - the difficulty timer at the top of the screen is completely ignored by everyone after their 3rd run. Top it off with nauseating FOV and you got one of the most boring roguelites I have ever played.

Doesn't hold a candle to a game it's trying to be an indirect sequel for despite being released almost 20 years later, or any of the other spiritual successors. Visually uninteresting and uninspiring, with graphics that try to look cartoony and simple but end up looking extremely dated, with terrible and repetitive visual effects- hell, destroyed planes don't even leave any wreckage, just disappear mid-air, often times in a tiny explosion 1/5th the size. Sense of scale is nowhere to be found as the battles and maps feel smaller than its 23-year old predecessor, let alone Supreme Commander. Planets instead of flat maps sound like a cool idea, but ends up falling flat as you realize the planets are hilariously small even on largest settings, completely uninteresting and usually have completely flat terrain anyway, and managing multiple planets even with multiple screens is a horrible tedious pain. Only one faction with a pathetic variety of uninteresting units is not enough to entertain anyone for even half their first match. All that coupled with hilariously simplistic galactic conquest mode makes me honestly think this is a game for children ages 3-10. Quite shady developer practices, too. There are plenty of games that do everything Planetary Annihilation tries to do, each better in every way.

There's a reason people want Victoria 3. This is by far the best Paradox game, and maybe the best grand strategy game too. It's hilarious to see people trying to mod more modern Paradox games to add something Victoria 2 did flawlessly 10 years ago - interesting and intricate geopolitics and economy.

My personal favorite RTS game of all time. Immense scale, interesting and different factions, easy to learn and hard to master economy system. Has gorgeous if a bit repetitive soundtrack and interesting campaigns. A game way ahead of its time for 2007, with multiple monitor support, any resolution or framerate, scalable UI, split views, incredible modability with almost all files being editable, and many scalable graphics settings tweakable far beyond the in-game options to make the game look gorgeous even in 2020. As a result, has an active multiplayer community in FAF version, which also comes with tons of improvements on balance and performance, many small additions, and lots more automation options letting you focus on actual strategy and battles rather than watching your actions per minute. Sadly the scale of the game is dragged down by single core limitations and only ~2.3Gb of RAM even with large address aware, which makes heavily modded installs, huge maps and games with many AI opponents practically unplayable, but due to AI stupidity even with various AI mods I strongly recommend playing this against real people. 8-player diplomacy FFA games with 30 mods on a 81x81km map is some of the best experience I've ever had in videogames, and definitely worth the million hours I spent making the mods work together. An undying classic in my eyes.

Possibly the most complex 4x game to date, If you can get past the dated graphics, terrible UI and a noticeable lack of many quality-of-life features, it can keep you entertained for possibly thousands of hours learning to play dozens of unique nations, casting thousands of spells and crafting thousands of items. Has many mods and conversions, including the gargantuan Enhanced mod that stuffs the game to the brim with even more things, and has a fantastic, big and friendly multiplayer community eager to play with and teach a complete beginner.

Gets a 10/10 for the soundtrack alone, then I found out there's a really awesome Harvest Moon-like game that comes with Raven's Descent and Dance of the Moonlight Jellies

The last good Total War game. Simple gameplay even the series' infamously braindead AI can grasp, great authentic music, and graphics that look stunning 9 years after release.

By far the best Civilization game vanilla. With mods it takes on the entire 4X genre

The only problem with Factorio is that it doesn't come with free therapy sessions to cure crippling addiction to it

A game seemingly everyone grew up on to realize it's kind of a shoddy, unbalanced, janky and broken mess, with some of the worst writing in videogame history. Only enjoyable as a modding platform

Incredible game with insane levels of replayability through infinite variations of spells and gameplay scenarios. Great modding community expanding the interaction and emergent gameplay. Unsettling atmosphere with many secrets. Definitely one of the best indie games this year, and certainly my favorite roguelite, by an extremely large margin.

The fact that the game barely holds 55-60fps average on a 3080 quickly became secondary as I realized this game is closer to a story-based action/shooter game, think Far Cry or Fallout 4, than an actual RPG. The role-playing aspect is incredibly limited, and no, it does not get better after the prologue. At least in FO4's terrible dialogue system you could say the same thing with the same outcome in 4 different ways, in Cyberpunk you get 3 if you're lucky, probably due to the same problem of having a voiced protagonist. I genuinely laughed out loud when the game forced a single dialogue option in the very beginning, only for the character I was talking to to tell me to stop asking stupid questions. I can understand the people having fun with it, but for me it sure isn't a city where I can be anyone. I had really high hopes for this game for 7 years, since 8th grade. Refunded after just under 20 hours. Made me want to pull out my dusty Cyberpunk 2020 rulebook though.